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Cooperativization as Alternative to Globalizing Capitalism
Betsy Bowman & Bob Stone
Members, GEO Newsletter Editorial Board
An Occasional Paper of Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO).
November, 2004
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Abstract
Can we construct a better world than that of globalizing capitalism?
Yes!
Through cooperativization.
We claim that first-world networks of worker
cooperatives - like the one around Mondragón, Spain - if re-oriented so as to
solidarize with the alter-globalization movement, could almost fully replace
capitalism by a democratic economy.
These leading edge worker cooperatives would
need to restore their deteriorating internal democracy and form a new vanguard
with third-world "communities in resistance" and the "social and solidarity
economy" in a joint non-violent but liberatory transformation of the global
economy.
Since the mid-1970s, both public and social property, especially communal land
on which much of humanity's rural half depends, has been under attack. But
cooperativization - democratizing production, distribution, and investment - can
stop this, reversing capitalism's worst advances.
Runaway shops will cease as capital is anchored by workers' homes. Exploitation
will yield to profit-sharing. Grow-or-die imperatives that threaten global war
and environmental ruin will implode as competition is reduced overall. To stay
abreast of the greater productivity of cooperatives, capitalist firms will be
compelled to democratize.
Cooperativization cannot end capitalism itself. But the autonomy gained as
workers' control replaces labor markets will be lost unless remaining markets
are in turn replaced by: restored public goods and control of distribution,
minimum universal incomes, democratic planning among cooperative networks, and
direct user-producer communication in place of commodity production. Objections
derived from Marx, Luxemburg, and others are answered.
The paper is divided into four sections:
1. The Degeneration Problem;
2. How Alter-Globalization Movements Can Unravel Capitalism;
3. Paradigm Shifting Beyond Corporate Globalization;
4. Objections and Replies.
- "Our goal is more than simple options for individual improvement. It is more. If
the cooperative enterprise does not serve for more, the world of work has the
right to spit in our faces."
José María Arizmendiarrieta (Quoted by MacLeod 1997)
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